BEING butch has, it appears, never been so popular at Westminster.
Testosterone was positively bouncing off the Commons rafters during yesterday's muscular exchanges at Prime Minister's Questions.
The issue of manliness was first raised by the butch Welshman Chris Bryant, who pointed out there were now nine Whitehall departments without a single woman minister.
To Labour titters, Mr B snipped: "Now I know the Prime Minister likes to think of himself as butch – he told us so last week – but what has the PM got against women?"
Butch Cameron rose to the despatch box but did not rise to the Labour bait. He made his own challenge to the manliness of Red Ed, urging him to stand up to those union dinosaurs and respond to their threat of a national strike by refusing their money. (Yeah, right).
The Labour chief refused to take the Tory bait and, flexing his biceps, sought to kick sand in the PM's face by pointing out how, on borrowing, he had actually increased the nation's debt by £9.3 billion in the first four months of this year.
Butch Cameron puffed out his chest and insisted he was not a wimp but had in fact cut the deficit by one-quarter, unlike the Labour weakling whose whole economic strategy was based on pumping up the borrowing bubble.
With Ed Balls, the professor of post- neo-classical endogenous growth theory, barking beside him, Red Ed flicked Butch Cameron's nose, noting how reports suggested the Coalition would not meet its debt reduction target by the end of the parliament. Was it true?
Intriguingly, the PM did not deny the charge but accused the Opposition of, for once, having a grand plan: "Predistribution".
As Butch Clegg and Butch Osborne chuckled in unison, Dave declared: "What that means is: You spend the money before you actually get it."
To Tory cheers, he added: "I think you'll find that's why we're in the mess we're in right now."
There were more cackles when Butch Cameron revealed the guru behind Labour's new idea of predistribution was one J Hacker, whose book was entitled The Road to Nowhere.
With Tory laughter ringing in his ears, Ed snorted: "Let me compliment him on such a butch answer." He then sought to embarrass the PM over his Cabinet reshuffle, mentioning Caroline Spelman, expelled for being too old at 54, but replaced by a man – who was older.
"Very butch, Mr Speaker," snapped the Labour chief.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article